Think of a computer game. 60 FPS. So 16 ms time per frame. Assume you're running comfortably within 14 ms per frame, so you get nice and smooth 60 FPS. A 10 ms

Think of a computer game. 60 FPS. So 16 ms time per frame. Assume you're running comfortably within 14 ms per frame, so you get nice and smooth 60 FPS. A 10 ms GC here means you'll definitely miss at least 1 frame, a good chance you'll miss more, because the simulation code (or something else that needs to run whether or not a frame was on time) will need to catch up. For interactive desktop applications, the pause should be adjustable or at most a few milliseconds. Say, maximum 5 ms. For hardware devices... well, you just don't use GC there in the first place. Microsecond is a pretty long time in that area.